From Brisbane to Berlin and beyond

11.07.14

After moving to Berlin in 2012, Queensland College of Art graduate Karla Marchesi has been, amongst other things no doubt, wandering the streets, observing how life flourishes amongst the cracks of this city, and its complex history. It's a muted, mesmerising show and I thought I'd share it, as it's always interesting to see where Brisbane creatives go after college. Karla recently exhibited in Brisbane as part of David Malouf and Friends, at the Museum of Brisbane.

The following is from an interview with Samatha Segar, about her upcoming show Here nor there—which is a little closer to ‘home’, in Singapore at Chan Hampe Galleries…

“There is a quietness and reflective solitude living in a city where you don’t speak the language. You are immune to reading and receiving advertising messages and you cannot decipher conversations in public space. In this way your thoughts turn inwards and the city starts to hum at a different resonance. This coupled with my favourite pastime of observational walking has let the city reveal itself to me in a slow and intimate manner—wherein motifs and metaphors of a city emerge through the privilege of time; I observe without aim and walk without destination. This process alone could be read as living in a self-constructed divergent space—in one’s head, in between the gaps of social routine and demands of conventional employment.

The works serves as a metaphor for Berlin in that it is meant to capture the city’s cycle of growth, flux, schism, transformation, and renewal. For many within the creative community here, Berlin can be experienced simultaneously as a pleasure garden, purgatory, place of possibility, and site of reinvention; as I've said, it is a city that manages to regenerate and flourish no matter the circumstances.”